Inauguration Day

During Inauguration Day, the seniors and juniors gathered in Manley's and Copeland's room in order to watch Obama's inauguration. At first I did not feel like it was such a big deal, since my initial thought about it was that we were just watching someone, who is more powerful than us, entering a house, which is bigger than any of our houses. But I was immediately proven wrong the second that I saw the coverage of the inauguration. Millions of people were willing to take a day off of work and school to watch Obama's speech live. Everyone was ready to feel a great sense of unity through Obama's words, and they did. The people in Copeland's room as well as everyone that was watching Obama in D.C. was especially wound-up when Obama said: “We will not apologise for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defence, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.” It creates a team spirit that everyone throughout America can feel. It gives people the idea that together we will “defeat” all those say that our way of life is weak.

This particular moment and reaction displayed a very important aspect of the American way of life, which is that we take any sense of accomplishment and ignore everything else. When something happens in our favor, we tend to focus mainly on that rather than seeking for errors and possible improvements. In this case, the American people were so blinded by the, yet to happen triumph over others who attempts to break our spirit, that no one appeared to notice the contradiction in Obama’s speech. In his speech, Obama says “We will not apologise for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defence,” which goes against his whole slogan about “Hope and Change.” Change is in fact a form of apologizing, when it happens to something internal such as a way of life. Changing our way of life admits that our former way of life has flaws. And to create a new approach of living would be to say that there is a better lifestyle that perhaps can be more effective. However Obama is now saying that we do not need to change or even defend our way of life. All the viewers took his words in as a sense of pride and victory, and ignored the imperfection of his speech. The response to this situation is just one example of the daily life of an American.